Murderess
by Slightly Confused Kitty
Summary: Haruno Sakura has been convicted of first degree murder of the majority of the Uchiha clan. But she didn't die on schedule, and she wasn't innocent. This is her dark story.
1. Convicted

Murderess

by Slightly Confused Kitty

Chapter 1

"Haruno Sakura has been convicted of first degree murder of the majority of the Uchiha clan. Her punishment is execution, as decided by the court, to be carried out on the fifteenth of July at noon."

Naruto swore and punched the training log, shattering it. He had yelled himself hoarse at the judge and the Hokage, to no effect. Didn't these people realize that there was no way Haruno Sakura, of all people would intentionally hurt anyone? She couldn't have possibly killed a whole clan! She was too... too nice and sweet and so SAKURA.

Those of the Konoha 12 who weren't on missions had all testified, saying no, Sakura wouldn't do that, she couldn't have. But the evidence was all against her. DNA samples, security pictures, the whole deal proved she had been there that night during the murder. The report of her annual check-up, two days after, at the Konoha Hospital, showed no evidence that she had been tied up, put under genjutsu, or in any way knocked out or immobilized recently. No one knew she had left her bed to go to the Uchiha compound, and she didn't tell anyone that she did. She had no alibi or defense except for the word of honor of her fellow ninja that it wasn't in her character. The prosecuting lawyer had smiled-smiled! as the death sentence was passed. Sakura herself had sat mutely during the trial and conviction, not defending herself or her honor as it was coldly ripped to shreds.

Everything pointed to her guilt. Except her. She didn't belong in this situation. Someone more cold, more deadly, more powerful belonged in her high-security cell, but she just looked out of place among the filth, urine, grime and blood that dripped off the walls. She was silent. In fact, the last thing she said seemed so long ago... Naruto squeezed his eyes shut as the memory flashed over his mind.

-_-_

_"Naruto!"_

_"Hey, Sakura-chan! What's up?"_

_"Could you swing by the hospital during lunch? We're having a complete stampede of little scraped-up genins, and I know you like talking to them. Also it keeps them from trying to push every damn button and lever they see..."_

_"Haha! Sure, Sakura! Do you-" He had been cut off by the appearance of some jonin with a heavy-jawed face and lined eyes._

_"Haruno Sakura?" The ninja's voice was business-like and more distant than most ninja in their home village._

_"Ah, yes? If it's Kyo-chan poking random switches again-" She smiled affectionately at the thought of the curious genin._

_"Your presence is required in the Hokage's office. Immedietely." He didn't vanish, staring her down for an answer._

_"Um... Sure. I'll be right there."_

_"I was told to escort you there." Naruto, who had been debating going for ramen, caught this. Messengers usually didn't hang around- this must be serious. His eyes narrowed at the jonin, who in turn continued his scrutiny of the much-shorter medic. She raised an eyebrow uncertainly._

_"Uh, okay. Bye Naruto! Don't forget to come by at lunch!" Sakura grinned at him before disappearing in a whirl of wind along with the jonin._

She hadn't returned to the hospital by lunch. Or the day after. And now it looked like she would never work there again.

What had he wanted to ask her? Naruto didn't have a clue. It really didn't matter.

How had this all happened anyway?

------

A/N: I'm not sure whether I will continue this or not, so please tell me what you think. Thank you!


	2. Seiko and Akira

Murderess

By Slightly Confused Kitty

Chapter 2

* * *

_15 YEARS AGO_

The rain flung itself against the streets and roofs of Shizuka, a small, non-ninja village in Cloud Country. It was enclosed by menacing, claw-like mountains and had a nearly constant downpour. The village prided itself only in the enormous stone monastery, known for its properties in spiritual enlightenment. But it was a poor village, filled with underfed peasants, who tended flocks of mountain goats and a few, sparse crops in the surrounding mountains.

In a small, bare hut near the edge of the village, glass crashed, accompanying the clatter of the rain. A man slammed his fist on the old cracked dining table. He had a laborer's stocky build and scars. His shock of brown hair was unkempt and fell in oily strands into his flashing black eyes, only to be fiercely pushed aside. His frame was draped with well-mended pieces of cotton cloth, worn to a brown-grey shade, despite whatever its original colors were.

"How _dare _you try to tell _me_ what to do! We're better off here-" He roared, his posture that of an experienced fighter- his feet spread, one before the other, and his knees bent. His furious face loomed at his wife, who interrupted him with her own vehement screech.

"Here? _Here?!_ In this _dump_ of a town? All you do is scurry off to your parents' house every day, while I have to put up with this stinking place! There's no food that isn't infested by something, how the hell are we supposed to support the baby?! Tell me that, Akira!" A woman, with a lined face and faded red hair snapped back. She leaned against the wall, in a position that would have seemed nonchalant except for her tense body and anger-twisted face. Her pregnancy showed through the thin, heavily-patched dress she wore. Her eyes were once a vibrant green, but somehow washed-out and old far beyond her forty years.

"_My_ parents did fine raising me _and _my three siblings here! We'll be fine! It's you! You want to blindly march off to somewhere because you're too damn_ snooty_ to stay here! We stay HERE, and that's FINAL, Seiko!" Akira snarled back, pounding his fist into his hand with an ominous slapping noise. He whirled around, intending to storm out the ramshackle excuse for a door.

"'_Snooty'?_ I want a good life for my baby and you dare call me 'snooty', you bastard?! Why stay here when we can do so much better somewhere else!?" Seiko pushed herself roughly off the wall, with only a slight flinch from her delicate condition. She met Akira's raging glare evenly. "If you can't be _bothered_ making sure _our_ child grows up well, then don't _bother_ crawling back to me! Got it?"

Akira yowled like a beaten cat and slammed the door open viciously. He stomped off into the pounding rain, only stopping to punch their street's empty and drenched trashcan, which clanged and doubled over with the force of his strike. He flung it away down the constantly flooded mud road, and continued on his way out of sight, relieving his temper by savagely punching and kicking objects in his path. Just before she lost his image to the sheets of rain, he harshly body-slammed another well-built person, who shoved him back.

Seiko watched, resting her forehead on the cool doorframe as the fight and adrenaline drained from her. Now what? Akira, her only connection here, was gone. It was only because of him that she was able to get anything in this Godforsaken town- the residents distrusted outsiders immensely. She glanced down at her stomach, and a weak flutter responded. A faint smile tugged at her thin lips. She would do anything for this tiny life. She could do anything.

The next day dawned, with only a sprinkle of rain. A bundled figure in shabby cloth stumbled out of the town, careful to maintain her balance. She silently met a taller, slim figure who clutched a wooden herding rod for support. The two began the arduous journey over the jagged peaks of the mountains.

* * *

Seiko, her face wet with sweat and tears, screamed in pain and bit down hard on the stick of wood in her mouth. So _this_, this insane agony was childbirth. She could barely see the blurred, tan room, broken by the white oufits of two medical staff and a few blocky, dark grey machines or cabinets. A doctor with black hair, cropped short, loomed over her and was telling her to 'push, push' in a steady, soothing rhythm that slid in and out of Seiko's mindless world of pain. With a final shriek, Seiko pressed the little child into the world, and dropped out herself, exhausted by the effort. The child immediately wailed as the chilly air hit her.

The black-haired doctor expertly checked the wrist pulse of baby and mother and sighed tiredly, stripping off her bloodstained gloves.

"9:46 pm, March 28th." A nurse hastily scribbled down the date and time on a birth certificate and then on a death certificate she drew from a slate-grey file cabinet in the corner of the cramped room. She then turned to an old-fashioned computer, and entered the data into the database. The muffled tapping at the keyboard was the only sound that accompanied the infant's screeching.

The dark-haired doctor carefully carried the keening and bloody infant to a large tub of warm water to be cleaned. The baby continued to bawl, though seemed slightly less agitated once it was swaddled in a warmed cloth.

The first nurse, who had honey-blonde hair tied back with a rubber band, spared only a brief, dispassionate glance at the child before 'milking' the still mother into a clear plastic baby bottle. She finished after a few minutes, capped it with a teat, and strode to the other side of the room with the quiet clicking of heels. The blonde skillfully wedged the rubber end of the bottle between the baby's tiny gums. The girl abruptly stopped her screaming, and began suckling with gusto, trying to hold the cylindrical container with her minute, chubby hands. The black-haired woman dexterously cradled the now-silent babe in one arm, while smoothly taking hold of the milk flask. She looked at her companion.

"What now?" The briefly sated infant had no known relatives except the dead mother, who refused to give any information but her first name, Seiko. The pregnant woman had shuffled into the village a few days ago, clenching her jaw and her tattered cloak between bony hands. She seemed to have no possessions except the clothing on her back, and had been carted to the run-down hospital by the helpful hotel owner when her water broke.

The blonde nurse cleared her throat and spoke in a low, naturally throaty voice.

"We'll keep her. The orphanage here is as good as a slaughterhouse, and one of us can milk her."

"Thank you, Lady Tsunade."

* * *

A/N: Due to a few kind reviewers, I remembered the existence of this story and wrote more. I'm amazed, too. And yes, this DOES relate to Sakura and her apparently homicidal rampage on the poor helpless Uchihas.

Please tell me what you think. Thank you!


	3. Mommy

Murderess

By Slightly Confused Kitty

Chapter 3

* * *

Sakura was a strange child, and it wasn't just her blindingly pink hair or flashing, lush green eyes. It was how she would stare at nothing, or watch the lazy progression of somethingvisible only to her move across the room. Sometimes the six-year-old would smile or frown suddenly, reacting to some event neither Tsunade nor Shizune could determine.

Shizune often asked her what she was looking at, and only received a solemn stare that didn't belong on a child and a cryptic or ridiculous answer.

"It."

"The lady."

"Can't you see it?"

"She's watching."

"I smiled because she did."

Eventually Sakura was diagnosed with a form of paranoia, based on the belief that the girl had the repeated delusion of a certain woman's existence. The psychiatric textbooks Tsunade consulted attributed this to a fervent wish to see her biological mother, who had been described to Sakura numerous times. The books only recommended not singling the child out for this symptom, but allowing them to outgrow it.

So Tsunade and Shizune allowed Sakura to go to the drab country school nearby and interact with others her age, though it seemed that she was teased more than any other interaction. Sakura would come home to their second-story apartment, her shoulders slumped. Her face would be dirt-streaked from being pushed down, broken only by the clear trails of tears. Yet she seemed happy enough otherwise- the teachers adored the quiet, intelligent girl with unusual hair, and she proudly displayed her consistent, perfect test scores.

The sun was bright that afternoon, and hung like a giant medallion off some mighty deity's blue neck. Sakura squinted against the glare and scuffed her old, too-large tennis shoes in the dust of Enali Way as she shambled her way home. Her red and pink plastic backpack bobbed behind her, scratched up from its repeated uses. She wore a short-sleeved, dark yellow t-shirt that was a bit small and whose original words were too faded to read.

Why wouldn't Ami just leave her alone? Why did she have to have ugly pink hair and a big forehead? A few tears leaked from Sakura's eyes, and she stopped in the middle of the deserted, cracked sidewalk.

The lazy afternoon smeared away with the stinging sadness, and Sakura blundered over to where she remembered a bench was. Desperately grasping the time-smoothed stone, Sakura whimpered as the day took its toll.

"_Sakura."_ Her head snapped up and a smile tugged at her lips as she saw the beautiful woman with short red hair and the same eyes as Sakura. The woman reached out a hand kindly to help Sakura up. Sakura grinned at her, her worries evaporating, and stretched out a small hand to the lady. But the lady passed right through her hand, and began fading. Her nice smile was turning down, into a betrayed grimace.

"_Sakura, come here. Why are you going away? Sakura, come back!" _

"I'm not going! You're going!" Sakura called out pathetically, still trying to hold the woman's outstretched hand. The nice lady always left like this, swirling away like a disturbed bowl of miso soup. "Why are _you_ going?"

The sun still gleamed down, and Sakura still watched where her mother had disappeared. It seemed like years before Shizune bustled down the now-dusky street, breaking the spell.

"Sakura? Sakura! Are you alright? Where have you been?"

* * *

It was that night that Sakura ran away.

In her plain bedroom, with the glass eyes of stuffed animals and dolls watching from their perches on the dresser, she woke suddenly into the pitch black night, as if someone had dumped cold water down her back. Her wide eyes skimmed the room, searching for the disturbance futilely- she was blind in the oppressive dark.

"M-mommy?" Sakura's voice quivered. She threw the quilts aside and fell clumsily out of bed, just managing not to plummet to the thin carpet. She quickly slid her bare feet into the fuzzy slippers by her bed.

"W-who's there?" No one answered, but she was certain she heard a furtive shift of _something_ across the room. Sakura narrowed her sightless eyes and felt her way down the wall toward the window, obscured by curtains. She knew there was a dazzlingly bright streetlamp outside, ironically the culprit for her blackout curtains and current state of sightlessness.

Sakura thought she heard another movement behind her, and adrenaline rushed through her. With a single, awkward yank, the curtain and its brass rod fell. The rod's clang was mercifully muffled by the heap of cloth it once held up.

The sharply illuminated room was stark and bare, tinted yellow by the lamp outside, and no shadowy figures hid in the corners, or under the bed. Sakura searched silently, her jaw set, and eyes squinting.

Fatigued by the disappointments of school and her fading mother, Sakura collapsed bonelessly against the foot of her bed with a soft sigh, without putting the curtain back up.

So it was quite clear that her real mother _did_ exist that night, because she cast a clear-cut shadow in the eerie yellow light. Fake things don't do that.

"_Sakura." _ Sakura's breathing hitched, and her eyes snapped open, eagerly scanning the room anew. "_Sakura, come here."_

And there she was, clothed in the layered, patterned kimonos of a princess from one of Sakura's storybooks. Her bottle green eyes shone kindly, and her hand reached out to her daughter from the copious folds of rich cloth.

Sakura scrambled to her feet, eyes greedily drinking in the sight and mouth grinning widely.

"Mommy… _You _woke me up." Her voice whispered reverently to the lovely woman, who nodded approvingly at her deduction.

The apparition smiled benevolently and clasped Sakura's little fingers in a grasp that was airy and fragile. Seiko drifted out of the room, through the old sheet that served as a door, guiding Sakura out through the hallway, past Tsunade's room, past the sofa where Shizune snored peacefully, to the front door.

Sakura, glancing up often to check that _yes, yes, Mommy's still here_, as she undid the heavy latch, which squeaked once but did not wake Shizune. She slipped out, light as a shadow, and held the door for her ghostly companion, who floated out, thanking Sakura sweetly.

Again, Seiko's grip seemed easily breakable and desperate as she led an admiring Sakura down the one flight of stairs to the lobby. Sakura tried to match the swift pace, so her mommy's reassuring presence wouldn't leave. The front desk lady was half asleep, and only showed life by her nodding head as she stared mindlessly at the glowing white of the computer screen. The pair passed without detection, and the only noise the receptionist heard was the hushed click of the front door, which was probably just due to her Goddamn slave-driver of a boss and lack of sleep anyway.

* * *

A/N: Oooh, cliffy. :D

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Confusions? Flames? Requests for faster updates?

All welcome. Also, shout-out to darksakudragon. They've been lovely about reviewing and alerting and awesomeness. Two of the four reviews so far are from darksakudragon. O.o I feel so honored!

Please tell me what you think! I have no real way of knowing otherwise…


End file.
